Pakistan’s military and political leadership is scrambling to explain how Osama bin Laden came to be living in a house in Abbottabad, 60 miles from Islamabad, as well as trying to assuage people’s concerns about the military and intelligence apparatus’ inability to detect or challenge the U.S.’s so-called breach of sovereignty.

Under attack from all corners, Pakistan is attempting to fall back on “allies” not named America. While Prime Minister Gilani eulogized Pakistan’s ties to China in a manner most poetic, Pakistan dispatched Interior Minister Rehman Malik to Saudi Arabia for consultations. In the seaport city of Jeddah, Mr. Malik spoke to al-Arabiya, in an interview charged with rhetoric and unseemly comparisons. Below is an excerpt from Daily Pak:

Rehman Malik, in speaking with an Arabic newspaper said that Osama bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan was an intelligence failure, in the same way that 9/11 was a failure of U.S. intelligence agencies. But this doesn’t mean that Pakistan’s intelligence agencies harbor terrorists. Mr. Malik said that there would not be any calls for resignation of anyone from the political or military establishments, just as no one from U.S.’s political or military establishment resigned as a result of 9/11. To those accusing Pakistan of connivance, Mr. Malik asks, who created Osama bin Laden? Who used bin Laden against the Russians in Afghanistan?

He said that Pakistan had never allowed Osama bin Laden to come to Pakistan. Mr. Malik also stated that the essence of the problem was the lack of trust between Pakistan and the U.S. In response to another question, Mr. Malik said that if India attempted any operations against Pakistan, it would be given a befitting reply to its misadventure. [روزنامہ پاکستان]

Osama bin-Laden has been killed. U.S. president Barack Obama made the announcement over an hour ago. We have more questions than answers about the nature of the operation that led to his killing and what cooperation, if any, was received from other governments. Some points for us to consider:

The fact that bin Laden was killed outside Abbottabad (75 miles from Islamabad) is significant. Abbottabad is reported to house several retired Pakistani army and intelligence officers.

Mr. Obama’s mention of President Zardari, and not Gen. Kayani/DG-ISI Lt. Gen. Shuja Pasha is equally significant. We know that the operation was in the works since August 2010, and gained momentum over the last six weeks. It is also important to note Mr. Obama’s mention that the operation was entirely executed by the U.S. — this was not a joint operation with Pakistani special-ops forces. It is not clear at what point the Americans informed the Pakistanis. If it turns out that the Pakistani civil administration was informed days or weeks before the operation, this is a significant victory for the civil administration over the military-jihadi complex (MJC). If the Zardari government was informed ex post facto, it will still affect civil-military relations in Pakistan, but on a relatively lesser scale.

We cannot read too much into President Obama thanking Pakistan for its cooperation. The U.S. president was speaking in general terms — lest we forget, there is still a battle raging in Afghanistan for which the U.S. requires Pakistan’s assistance. There was not much else Mr. Obama could have said about Pakistan’s duplicity.

Given the fact that U.S. Navy SEALs traveled from Afghanistan to Pakistan and executed the operation, it is likely that some level of Pakistani cooperation — whether direct, or indirect — was required. If it turns out that cooperation was provided by Pakistan’s FIA and not the ISI, this is again, a significant moment in civil-military relations in Pakistan.

If, in the remote possibility, any assistance was provided by Pakistan’s military/ISI, it only means that Osama bin Laden had become expendable to them. The torch had been passed.

Expect the battle between the civil administration and its goons, and the Pakistani military and its goons to play out openly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This will also effect the U.S.’s ability to move men and resources from Pakistan’s tribal areas into Afghanistan. This can be significantly consequential to the U.S.’s war in Afghanistan.

The MJC will look to reassert itself as quickly and as decisively as possible. It will set its sights on high-value targets in Pakistan, Afghanistan or even India.

Critically, the Indian government needs to guard itself against possible terrorist activity in mainland India. ISI or al-Qaeda inspired attacks on Indian soil in the immediate future cannot be ruled out. India is perhaps the most vulnerable target for the Pakistani MJC to counter-punch the Zardari government, which is ostensibly engaged in a “peace process” with New Delhi.

In Col. Qaddafi’s rambling address to his nation and the world (Youtube — 1, 2, 3), he accused Osama bin Laden of plotting against Libya and blamed the protests on the street on the country’s youth who he said had been drugged via “hallucinatory pills in their drinks, their milk, their Nescafe.”

The good Colonel has been a staunch, lifelong opponent of the “decadence of Western culture” (mostly when it works against him). So on this Oscar Awards night, I find it odd that he might have drawn inspiration for that fiery speech from a Hollywood production.

In Dr. Strangelove, General Ripper orders his nuclear-armed B-52s to attack Russia, seals his base, cuts communication with the Pentagon and orders his troops to open fire on anyone approaching his base. In the backdrop of a pitched battle between base forces and U.S. army troops, Gen. Ripper expounds on his theory about fluoridation and the “purity and essence of natural fluids” to a visibly frightened Group Captain Mandrake.

In this month’s Pragati, I discuss the rising threat of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in the context of the failed attempts to blow up cargo planes bound for the U.S. via London and the Middle East:

Al Qaeda, of course, has had a historical presence in the tribal provinces of Yemen. Osama bin Laden, though born in Riyadh, belongs to a branch of the Kidnah tribe of the Hadhramaut region in eastern Yemen, from where Mr bin Laden’s father emigrated. Yemen stands out from the other countries in the Peninsula as the least developed economically, with a high unemployment rate (35 per cent, 2009) and a per capita income roughly one-tenth that of Saudi Arabia’s. Its post-colonial history is marred in conflict — inter-tribal confrontations, a coup d’etat, support to a rebellion in neighboring Oman, and two civil wars.

In many ways, Yemen mirrors Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, with its rugged, mountainous terrain, general security vacuum, and low levels of economic development. Rather unsurprisingly therefore, Yemen provided conditions ideal for al-Qaeda to promulgate its regional campaign for jihad. It served as al-Qaeda’s base for the first attack on Western targets in 1992; a bombing of a hotel used by US troops in Aden, which resulted in two civilian deaths. Its next attack in 2000, off the coast of Aden, killed 17 US sailors aboard the USS Cole. [Pragati]